(Fr. sérénade; Ger. Serenade, Ständchen; It. serenada, serenata).
A musical form, contemporary with and related to other mid-18th-century orchestral genres including the symphony and the orchestral partita. The term originally signified a musical greeting, usually performed out of doors in the evening, to a beloved or a person of rank. J.G. Walther (Musicalisches Lexicon, 1732) described it as ‘ein Abend-Ständgen, eine Abend-Music; will dergleichen meist bey still- und angenehmer Nacht pflegt gemacht zu werden’ (‘an evening Ständchen, an evening piece; because such works are usually performed on quiet and pleasant nights’). The word, derived from the Latin serenus, was used in its Italian form, Serenata, in the late 16th century as a title for vocal works (for example Orazio Vecchi’s Selva di varia ricreatione, 1590), and in the 17th it was used for celebratory works for voices and instruments; by the end of the century it was applied by such composers as Heinrich Biber (Serenade ‘Nightwatchman’s Call’, 1673) and J.J. Walther (Hortulus chelicus, 1688) to purely instrumental pieces, a usage accepted in the 18th century. It then came to stand, if loosely, for a work of a particular character, formal structure and instrumentation, of which Mozart’s serenades are the chief examples. Such works were composed mainly in Italy, Austria, Germany and Bohemia; it was the practice to perform them at about 9 p.m. (the Notturno, a similar kind of work, was usually given about 11 p.m.). Relics of the original meaning of the term are found in the pizzicato accompaniment of the movement entitled ‘Serenade’ in the String Quartet op.3 no.5 attributed to Haydn (but probably by Roman Hoffstetter); any movement with an accompaniment on plucked strings (suggesting the lute, guitar or mandolin) carried serenade connotations. Mozart used serenade arias in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Pedrillo’s romance) and Don Giovanni (‘Deh vieni alla finestra’), and a stylistic link is clear between the garden scene of Così fan tutte (‘Secondate, aurette amiche’) and his wind serenades; other composers to have used similar devices include Rossini (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Donizetti (Don Pasquale) and Eugen d’Albert (Tiefland).
A common serenade ensemble in the early Classical period consisted of wind instruments, double bass (a cellist would of course have had to be seated) and two violas. Settings for strings without wind appeared later. The serenade became a popular form among such early Classical composers as Asplmayr, Boccherini (g501, 1776), Dittersdorf, Michael Haydn, Pichl, Punto and Johann Baptist Toeschi.
In western Austria, Salzburg and parts of Bavaria, however, the orchestral serenade dominated; in Salzburg, at least, it was cultivated from the 1730s or 40s. Its multi-movement structure, never strictly prescribed and including any number of movements up to ten, was championed by Leopold Mozart, who composed more than 30 such works by 1757, all of them now lost. His sole surviving serenade, probably composed in 1762, is a forerunner of Mozart’s serenades of the later 1760s. Generally speaking, serenades include an opening sonata-allegro movement, two slow movements alternating with two or three minuets (with the occasional insertion of a movement in faster tempo) and a closing Presto or Allegro molto. Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart, as well as Michael Haydn, commonly included two concerto-like movements (one fast, one slow; Leopold Mozart’s Trumpet Concerto, which derives from his D major Serenade, is typical) in addition to a prominent solo part in a trio to one of the minuets; Mozart, more than Michael Haydn, often wrote such miniature concertos in keys remote from the main key of the work. Some of his serenades, described in the family letters as ‘Finalmusiken’, were given as part of the ceremonies marking the end of the academic year at the Salzburg Benedictine University (k203/189b, 204/213a, 320); others were composed to celebrate special occasions (k250/248b, ‘Haffner’, written for the wedding of Elisabeth Haffner and F.X.A. Späth). The close connection between the serenade and other orchestral genres is shown by Mozart’s redaction of k204 as a four-movement symphony; by the same token, he gave the soloistic movements from the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade k320 as a sinfonia concertante at his Burgtheater concert (Vienna, 23 March 1783).
As an orchestral genre, the mid-century serenade had little to do with the contemporaneous Divertimento, which usually represented one-to-a-part ensemble music (‘chamber’ music in the modern sense). Nevertheless, some serenades were probably given soloistically (Mozart’s practice cannot be assumed to hold for the works of all his contemporaries). Mozart’s Viennese serenades of the 1780s were generally scored for wind (k361/370a, 375, 388/384a); Eine kleine Nachtmusik k525 is ambiguous and may have been intended to be orchestral. At the end of the 18th century the soloistic serenade became an important influence on chamber music, particularly the string trio, where through Mozart’s works and those of Joseph Dorsch, Johann Georg Holzbogen and Friedrich Joseph Kirmair it led to the development of the ‘grand trio’; it also influenced chamber music for larger ensembles of strings and wind (like the septet and octet – for example the works by Beethoven, Hummel, Conradin Kreutzer and Schubert). Beethoven’s only works entitled ‘serenade’ (for string trio op.8; for flute, violin and viola op.25) are to be regarded as chamber music. The serenade for mixed chamber ensemble was revived by Reger in his opp.77a and 141a.
In the 19th century the orchestral serenade began to predominate; the genre includes such works as Brahms’s opp.11 and 16, Volkmann’s opp.62, 63 and 69, Dvořák’s opp.22 and 44, Tchaikovsky’s op.48, Suk’s op.6, Elgar’s op.20, Sibelius’s op.69 for violin and orchestra (1912–13) and (for wind instruments) Strauss’s op.7. The orchestral serenade of the 19th century resembles the symphony or suite in construction, and 20th-century composers have freely explored and changed the serenade’s original formal layout and instrumentation. Smaller-scale serenades include Wolf’s Italienische Serenade, originally for string quartet, Dohnányi’s string trio op.10 (1905) and Stravinsky’s for piano (1925).
The German term Ständchen was used in the 19th century for serenade-like songs and pieces for male-voice chorus.
H. Hoffmann: ‘Über die Mozartschen Serenaden und Divertimenti’, Mozart-Jb 1929, 59–80
G. Hausswald: Mozarts Serenaden (Leipzig, 1951/R)
C. Bär: ‘Zur Andretter-Serenade KV.185’, MISM, ix/1–2 (1960), 7–9
G. Hausswald: Die Orchesterserenade, Mw, xxxiv (1970; Eng. trans., 1970)
J. Webster: ‘Towards a History of Viennese Chamber Music in the Early Classical Period’, JAMS, xxvii (1974), 212–47
W. Rainer: ‘Michael Haydns Orchesterserenaden’, MJb 1987–8, 73–9
Gesellschaftsgebundene instrumentale Unterhaltungsmusik des 18. Jahrhunderts: Eichstätt 1988
A. Kearns: ‘The Orchestral Serenade in Eighteenth-Century Salzburg’, JMR, xvi (1997), 163–97
For further bibliography see Divertimento.
HUBERT UNVERRICHT/CLIFF EISEN